


Poetics for Infatuation

by mimizans



Series: The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimizans/pseuds/mimizans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander feels badly the first time he sleeps with Maria. He feels badly the second time, and the third, but he doesn’t feel enough shame or regret to make him stop seeing her. When he realizes that no bolt of lightning is going to strike him down, no act of God is going to stay his hand and compel him to be a better man, his shame starts to become a routine, just like so many other routines in his life.</p>
<p>(Or, Alexander thinks)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetics for Infatuation

**Author's Note:**

> usually when i think about the question "why did alexander hamilton cheat on eliza hamilton" i come up with the answer "because of his incurable hoe disease"
> 
> but i figured i needed something a little more substantial for this verse, so here we are

Alexander feels badly the first time he sleeps with Maria. He feels badly the second time, and the third, but he doesn’t feel enough shame or regret to make him stop seeing her. When he realizes that no bolt of lightning is going to strike him down, no act of God is going to stay his hand and compel him to be a better man, his shame starts to become a routine, just like so many other routines in his life.

Get up, get dressed, kiss Eliza and the children goodbye. Go to work. Leave work later than he should. Go to Maria’s apartment. Fuck her. Shower. Go home. Apologize to Eliza for being late, but not for sleeping with another woman. Watch her smile sadly as she climbs the stairs to their bedroom. Do it all over again the next day.

It’s the normalcy of the whole thing that scares Alexander the most. He doesn’t feel like some dark, alternate version of himself, ruining his life with an uncharacteristic mistake; instead, he feels like this is who he truly is. He thinks that maybe this was always going to happen, and it was just a matter of time.

Alexander realizes, now that he’s sleeping with Maria, how close he’s come to cheating in the past. All the flirtations, all the almost-intimates. The women who have blushed when he said they were beautiful, the men who have tracked their eyes up his body and been met with a suggestive smile. Alexander had always believed he was just having fun. What was the harm, he thought, in making others feel special? In making himself feel special? He loved Eliza in a different way than he had loved anyone else; nothing and no one could compare to her. She had saved him from himself and had lit up each of his days since then, as brilliant and life-giving as the risen sun. He thought that didn’t have it in him to hurt her. 

He has realized now, of course, that he absolutely does.

Maybe after so long standing in the sunlight, Alexander muses, he has begun to crave the shadows it casts. Maria is everything that Eliza is not. She is effortlessly and obviously sensual, and she wears her desire on her sleeve. She laughs at things that she shouldn’t, and cries over the smallest misfortunes. She gets angry, too; she screams and sobs, throws lamps across her apartment. Sometimes she’s angry at him, for no reason, and sometimes at the world, for many reasons. Alexander isn’t sure why it is Maria that he chooses, when there are probably women with whom it would be much less emotionally and financially taxing to have an affair. He thinks perhaps he has a subconscious wish to make sure that everything in his life is as complicated as possible, up to and including extramarital affairs.

Alexander pities Maria, which was why he went home with her in the first place. He’s always had a soft spot for women in distress, and Maria had hit every one of his buttons, beautiful and tearful and empty. Pity, Alexander has found, is a dangerous emotion. Pity is part of the reason he can’t bring himself to stop seeing her. Maria says that she loves him. She tells him this often, sometimes right after sex, sometimes out of the blue. She says that she needs him, which, despite himself, Alexander finds compelling. Eliza - bright, capable, strong-willed Eliza - has never needed him. Not really. She could live without him if he was gone, Alexander is sure; Maria, on the other hand, says that she will die if he leaves her. 

Alexander pities himself, too, even though he knows he has no right to do so. He feels a void inside of himself, and he’s not sure how to fill it except with sex. He knows that it’s ridiculous: a man with his dream job, married to a woman he loves deeply, the father of wonderful children. How can he have the gall to be unsatisfied with his life?

But here he is, sneaking around to fuck another woman behind his wife’s back.

Alexander doesn’t try to pretend that there isn’t a thrill in it. The danger and wrongness of it turns him on, and the reality of meaningless sex after years of making love is oddly comforting. Touching Maria is like sticking his hand too close to a fire: there’s warmth and power and heady danger in it, but he’s going to burn himself up. Maria’s dark, depressing apartment with the paint peeling on the bathroom wall is the perfect backdrop for this affair. Alexander can almost imagine that this is where he belongs: the poor, illegitimate boy from the Caribbean, back in his natural habitat. Away from his wife, his children, the family and friends he’s chosen. Alone again, and fucking up his life.

When Alexander first begins sleeping with Maria, he doesn’t think about Eliza at all during sex. He’s overwhelmed with touching unfamiliar skin and hearing strange, gasping breaths in his ear. It’s like getting high, those first few times. Maria is loud and effusive in her praise, and being with her makes his blood sing with forgotten lust. But the longer it goes on, the more familiar Maria becomes, the more Eliza surfaces unbidden in Alexander’s thoughts. Maria will be underneath him, writhing and moaning, and Alexander will have to force back thoughts of Eliza moving the same way, smiling up at him, her eyes glassy with pleasure. It’s like his traitorous subconscious knows that each time he sees Maria, he is cutting another thread from the rope that’s holding his marriage together. What little moral voice he has left is trying to remind him of the biggest reason he shouldn’t be doing this.

But Alexander is weak - or, at least, not strong enough to say “no.”

After sleeping with Maria, Alexander always feels overfull, topped to the brim and threatening to bubble over. He feels, for a moment, that the emptiness in his chest has been filled. He feels satisfied, as if everything is as he would like it to be. Then, as soon as he’s registered that feeling, it’s gone, and he feels emptier than he did before. Alexander recognizes the strangeness of this dichotomy, of course. He started this because he wanted to feel complete. To have it all. Instead, he feels like he has less than ever before.

**Author's Note:**

> just fyi i won't be posting anything for the next week or so (FINALS, HAHA), but after that it should be Angelica Time. thanks for all the support you guys have given so far! i am banging things out for this fandom faster than i have with any other, like i'm hamilton writing the federalist papers. except instead of defending the constitution, i'm writing modern alternate universe fic where he continues to be a hoe and ruin his own life! :^)


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